


Khan: Reawakening

by wheel_pen



Series: Khan AU [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 22:44:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4684082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Enterprise has been ordered to take the sleeping Augments to an isolated planet to colonize, but Khan is unexpectedly revived en route.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Khan: Reawakening

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored. That’s just how I do things.  
> I hope you enjoy this AU. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe.

The sensation of awakening from cryo-sleep was familiar but disorienting. He lay perfectly still, trying to breathe evenly as he listened to the sounds around him, took stock of his environment. He was vulnerable right now, cold, weak, slow—better to let those around him think he was still unconscious, so he at least had that element of surprise, should it become necessary.

Though if murder was on their minds, it would have been far easier to do it while he was asleep.

Gradually, he recognized the voices around him, the beeps of the computer, the hum of the engines. He was on the _Enterprise_ again, and at least a few of the medical staff were those he’d dealt with before. Very curious.

The last thing he remembered was being put back in the hated tube, to be sent off to sleep again. For the second time, humanity did not have the strength to execute him; the weakness disgusted him, even though it meant he was still alive. When he was in charge, he eliminated threats boldly, he didn’t allow them to fester in a dark corner until they sprang back up. Perhaps someone had hoped that an ‘accident’ would befall the warehouse where the cryo-tubes were stored, and he and his crew would die without anyone’s hands being soiled.

Humanity. A worthless bunch. Ruling over them was like ruling over sheep. Unsatisfying in the end.

“His vitals are stabilizing, Doctor,” said a woman.

“Mm-hmm,” replied a skeptical voice. “Open your eyes, Khan, and take a gander around.”

Khan blinked a few times, his eyes quickly becoming accustomed to the light. Sickbay, surrounded by Dr. McCoy, Spock, Kirk, and a phalanx of red-shirted security officers. If that was all they had to throw at him, they might as well have stayed home.

Naturally, everyone looked extremely serious, but only a slight bit older. “Well, this is unexpected,” Khan finally said, dryly. His tone suggested he thought them all idiots for waking him. Which he did.

“This was a bad idea, Bones,” Kirk declared. He didn’t take his eyes off Khan, as if he thought his gaze was pinning him to the biobed.

To prove otherwise Khan propped himself up on his elbows, causing several phasers to be drawn and pointed at him. He snorted at them. “You’re probably right,” he agreed, staring Kirk down.

“Oh, put it away, both of you,” McCoy told them. “If I hadn’t he would’ve died in that thing.” Khan looked around to see his cryo-tube on the floor, hastily disassembled from the looks of it. “I am going to check your eyes, do not flip out,” McCoy warned, showing him a scanner. Khan held himself very still, curious to know more about what was going on.

“I am forced to agree with Dr. McCoy,” Spock added, and it looked like he really _was_ forced. “Given our mission parameters, allowing his easily-preventable death would have violated our orders.”

Kirk still looked like he’d swallowed something bad, very bad. Khan sat up more, the doctor having finished his check, and gave an innocent, questioning look. “Lock him in the brig,” Kirk ordered.

“Might be a while before we get this thing working again,” McCoy pointed out, kicking an apparently useless piece of the cryo-tube aside.

“I don’t care. That’s what the brig’s for.”

A challenge, then. Khan liked challenges. The only reason he’d stayed in the cell last time was because it suited his purpose. If it didn’t, he had no doubt he could easily escape.

Kirk was too angry to think of this. Fortunately he had a Vulcan at his side, though Khan knew first-hand how _passionate_ Vulcans could be when roused. “Captain, Khan may voluntarily choose to be more… docile once he learns why cooperation would be in his best interests,” Spock pointed out. He regarded Khan like something unpleasant he’d found on the bottom of his boot.

Khan personally preferred an expression of fear to one of contempt. But his curiosity was quite powerful at this point. He glanced over at McCoy as the doctor drew some of his blood, then back to Kirk, as if saying, _I choose to allow this intrusion as a show of good faith._ He knew Kirk got the message when the young captain rolled his eyes.

“It’s been three years since your attacks on Earth,” Kirk began shortly.

“And, how’ve _you_ been?” Khan asked him, as if he truly cared.

Kirk gritted his teeth and continued. “The Federation Council, after _much_ debate, decided not to execute you and your crew.” Khan’s eyes flared at the mention of his crew and Kirk received his undivided attention. “They decided to give you what you wanted,” he went on, his tone slightly mocking. “A world to rule over.”

“An uninhabited planet,” Khan deduced, jumping ahead. His synapses crackled through the logic, the possibilities. “Your five-year mission. Deep space, somewhere no one will stumble across us.”

Kirk seemed peeved at having his news guessed, but Khan was beyond that now; he had new plans to make, many new plans. “Only this antique here malfunctioned,” McCoy added, nodding at the cryo-tube. “Not sure it was actually meant to be opened, let alone sealed up again.” He pointed something reminiscent of an old-fashioned handgun at Khan. “Subdermal locator beacon,” he warned, then injected something small but solid into Khan’s shoulder.

“Then you have my crew on board,” Khan said to Kirk, unable to prevent the urgency from creeping into his voice. “All of them? How many?”

“All seventy-two,” Spock confirmed when Kirk didn’t answer. No doubt he was thinking of all the people who had died because Khan didn’t care about _them_. Yet all of _his_ loved ones had survived.

“My compliments, Mr. Spock,” Khan replied with a grim smirk. “Your game was well-played.” Spock did not really want compliments from Khan. “But have you checked them _lately_?” he pressed, turning to McCoy. “In case of other malfunctions?”

“Don’t get your briefs in a bunch,” McCoy scoffed at him, which only served to highlight the fact that Khan was completely naked except for a thermal blanket. Not that Khan cared. “They’re all right here. See?” He pointed to a display panel on the wall. “Seventy-two little green wiggly lines.” Khan hopped off the biobed to see for himself, ignoring the alarm this produced in the security team. He stared with a frown at the anonymous lines and McCoy tapped one, switching to a close-up view of that cryo-tube and more detailed vitals. Khan cycled through them rapidly as the doctor, rolling his eyes, draped the thermal blanket he’d cast aside over his shoulders.

“You don’t have their names,” Khan noted. “Why?”

“Classified,” Kirk answered dryly. “Anything you’d like to tell us about them would be great.” He said this with some sarcasm, not expecting Khan to consider it.

But Khan had been considering many things in the few minutes he’d been awake. “Has the planet been chosen yet?”

“Still looking.”

“Then you have the future of myself and my crew in your hands,” Khan acknowledged frankly. “You could leave us in a harsh environment, or a fertile one. With plentiful supplies or none at all.”

“That’s right,” Kirk agreed, too smart to think Khan was conceding anything.

“Then, as Mr. Spock said, it _is_ in my best interests to cooperate,” Khan noted.

Kirk knew this wasn’t the whole story. “And?”

“I think you should awaken some of my crew.”

“Out of the question,” Kirk snapped, turning to leave.

“Marcus failed because he only awakened _me_ , Captain,” Khan told him, his voice low. He would not plead. Kirk wouldn’t believe that anyway. But perhaps he could convince him another way. “Awakening _certain_ others would help me to remain… docile.” As much as that was possible, anyway.

Kirk paused near the door, intrigued in spite of his suspicions. He glanced back over his shoulder. “I’ll think about it,” he deferred, and left with Spock.

Khan went back to staring at the wiggly lines. “Shower,” McCoy prompted him.

“Sonic? You need to adjust the frequency beyond my range of hearing,” Khan warned him. His first sonic shower had been a very unpleasant experience. But a ship in deep space was unlikely to waste water when sound waves would do just as well for most.

McCoy sighed dramatically and adjusted the frequency, flipping his pad around to show Khan. Khan adjusted it further and the doctor rolled his eyes. “Some of their brainwaves seem slightly erratic,” Khan commented as McCoy steered him to the shower stall. “You should play music to them. Mozart, Beethoven. Do you know who I’m talking about?” He’d had little time during his last awakening to track all the cultural changes.

“I’ll get right on that,” McCoy replied, sarcastic but not mean-spirited. “Now stop flashing us and get in there.”

**

Khan was infuriating.

The man had stayed in Sickbay, patient and well-behaved, while McCoy performed all sorts of tests on him, half of which were just for his own curiosity. He caught up on his reading, he taught the night nurses to play poker, and he even fixed the air cooling unit when it clogged up with tribble fur. And he obsessed over his crew in their cryo-tubes “like a mother hen,” in McCoy’s parlance—not an image Kirk would ever have associated with Khan—constantly tweaking the environmental conditions of the cargo bay where they were stored and piping in music and readings.

Also, he wrote. Kirk wanted information about his crew, he got it—mini-biographies of each person, by turns thrilling, sexy, sweet, clever, and outright hilarious. Kirk didn’t _want_ to laugh. But d----t, add writing crew reports to the list of things that Khan really _was_ better at.

Kirk met McCoy in the hall on the way to Sickbay, rereading some of his favorite parts on the pad he carried. “You finish Khan’s report?”

“Yeah,” Bones confirmed. “G-d, I couldn’t put it down. I felt so dirty afterwards.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kirk agreed. “I mean, the story about Moses Two Horses going to the grocery store—how does he make _going to the grocery store_ so exciting?” Kirk was extremely indignant about this.

“Yeah, it was even funnier once I figured out what a grocery store was,” the doctor admitted.

“I’m gonna have Uhura search the database and make sure he just didn’t crib these stories from someone else,” Kirk threatened.

“That seems highly unlikely, Captain,” Spock noted, joining them.

“Hey, Spock, I bet you hated Khan’s report, right?” Kirk guessed hopefully. “Too frivolous and emotional.” He still felt guilty for enjoying it.

Spock’s expression, subtle though it was, said Kirk wasn’t going to get what he wanted. “On the contrary. Once I moved past the trivial surface layer, I realized the keen insight he displayed into each crew member’s personality.”

“Oh G-d, it’s got subtext, too,” McCoy realized with horror.

“However, the report is incomplete,” Spock went on, and Kirk stopped them just outside of Sickbay.

“What do you mean?”

“Khan discusses seventy Augments,” Spock pointed out crisply. “He has seventy- _two_ crew members. There are two people who are never mentioned.”

Kirk seized upon this discrepancy. “Well, let’s go find out who’s missing,” he decided. He could hardly hope this was merely an oversight on Khan’s part.

Opening the Sickbay doors released a disturbing low-pitched sound, like a chorus of insects on a still night. Khan was sitting at a table with one of the nurses, whose green skin glittered metallically as she turned around. Khan closed his mouth, looking smug, and the sound stopped.

“What the h—l?” Kirk demanded.

The nurse opened her mouth as if to speak, producing more of the same sound but a little higher pitched, then suddenly stopped and covered her mouth as if embarrassed. “Computer, reengage Universal Translator,” Khan ordered.

“Sorry, sir,” the nurse said sheepishly, in words Kirk could understand. “I was just teaching Khan some of my native language, most humans can’t replicate the vocal cord vibrations—“

“I am not most humans,” Khan pronounced behind her.

Kirk remembered his opening comment with a slight cringe. “That’s your language? It’s really interesting,” he claimed in an upbeat tone. Khan smirked in the background, seeing right through him.

“Thank you, Nurse,” McCoy told her pointedly, and she took the hint and departed.

“Aliens were the biggest surprise to me, when I first awoke,” Khan offered, still lounging in his chair like he owned the place. “I did not think humanity would ever meet intelligent life from other planets, if it even existed.”

He sounded thoughtful, which Kirk felt was probably a bad thing, considering how his mind worked, and he waved the datapad before him. “Read your report,” he tossed off, putting a negative spin on his tone. “You’re missing two people.”

“Kirk, I’m impressed,” Khan replied condescendingly. “I didn’t realize you could count that high. No, wait, Mr. Spock told you, didn’t he?”

Kirk glared and was not helped by Spock’s expression that acknowledged this truth. “Last two crewmembers, Khan,” he reiterated. “Why talk about all the others, and not them?”

“Their names,” Khan began slowly, as if he’d had to prepare himself to reveal this information, “are Ruby and Hamish.” His gaze snapped to Kirk’s, no longer far away. “And if you want to know about them, you have to wake them up.”

“No way,” Kirk denied automatically, flippantly. “I want to wake up Moses Two Horses. And”—he scrolled through the report—“Carolina Abramovich.” He allowed non-professional interest to creep into his tone, remembering the titillating story Khan had written about her. “They sound like fun.”

Khan rolled his eyes. “You’re not experienced enough for Carolina,” he judged harshly, and Kirk’s eyes widened.

“ _Why_ do you wish these particular two crewmembers awakened?” Spock cut in, seeing that nothing good could come of Kirk’s next reply.

“They will help keep me _docile_ ,” Khan asserted, clearly loathing the word. “They’re the weakest of the Augments,” he added, “by every metric you care about.” Clearly he felt the weakest of the Augments was still more than a match for any human. “I require them,” he went on arrogantly. “And private quarters. Though I understand privacy will merely be a polite fiction.” His voice dripped with disdain.

His attitude rubbed Kirk the wrong way, per usual. “What do you need private quarters for?” he snapped. Khan raised an eyebrow as though Kirk really ought to be able to figure it out, and Kirk did; he just couldn’t believe the audacity. “No, no way,” he sputtered. “I’m not waking up your girlfriend and boyfriend and giving you a room to have an orgy in!”

“Well they’re not having it in _here_ ,” McCoy put in indignantly. “Sickbay is not equipped for conjugal visits!”

“The same conditions apply to whomever is awakened from my crew,” Khan shrugged, unembarrassed.

“Um—“

“I routinely have sexual relations with all of my crew, to reinforce social bonds and hierarchy.” Khan’s eyes flickered between the three men. “Not the standard Starfleet technique?” he guessed dryly.

“No,” Kirk managed to reply, maturely.

“Pity.”

Khan’s tone suggested a lot of things Kirk did _not_ want to think about right now, so he went back to the earlier question, which had not been answered to his satisfaction. “Why these two?”

“These two _first_ ,” Khan corrected. “My goal is that all, or almost all, of my crew be awakened before we are deposited on the planet’s surface, so they will be in peak condition to survive in a new environment.” Kirk was immediately against this idea, even though Khan had a way of making everything sound so d—n reasonable. “You will see Ruby and Hamish as pleasant and non-threatening, most people do,” Khan added, dismissively.

Kirk scoffed a little at this. “Non-threatening Augments. Right.”

“Our creators called them the ‘runts of the litter,’” Khan conveyed. His eyes flashed as he remembered this, and Kirk felt a brief stab of disbelief that anyone would insult Khan’s crew to him, even their creators. Surely it was the last mistake they ever made. Then Khan retracted whatever emotion he’d shown and went back to the familiar arrogance. “I find them calming. Together we will be cooperative.”

Kirk met Khan’s gaze, trying to read the other man, though that was probably impossible. On his own so far, Khan _had_ been cooperative. And on the surface, only one Augment awake seemed safer than three. But that was what Marcus had thought, and look what happened. Though Kirk admitted Marcus’s motivations had been less than pure. He did not want to make the same assumptions, the same mistakes, that the Admiral had.

“We’ll start with one,” Kirk allowed.

“Ruby,” Khan selected immediately.

“Alright, which one is she?” McCoy asked, directing Khan to the screen monitoring the cryo-tubes in the cargo hold.

“Captain, I question the wisdom of this idea,” Spock noted to him. Well, someone had to.

“Me too,” Kirk agreed, which was not the answer Spock expected, and didn’t exactly fill him with confidence. “But, I dunno, my gut says to give it a try.”

He could have done a great impersonation of Spock’s response to that—pursed lips, raised eyebrow, bone-dry tone repeating, “Your… _gut_?” with a smidge of condescension.

“ _Instinct_ , Spock,” Kirk responded, equally patronizing. “Intuition. Something tells me it might be a good idea.” Spock knew what he meant, because they’d had this exact same conversation many times over the last few years, with varying degrees of sarcasm on either side; but Spock always had to remain skeptical, for those (few, with extenuating circumstances) times when Kirk’s instincts turned out to be wrong. That was why they worked so well together.

Hopefully, that skepticism would not prove correct this time.


End file.
